The recent flare-up of the NSA surviellance flap brings to light the question of what people really believe about the War on Terror. With zero follow-on attacks in five years some Americans have begun to ask why such measures are needed, and even to question the conventional explanation of 9/11.

Go to any message board and chances are you’ll run across a few threads claiming 9/11 was an inside job. The posters will point to various sites where structural engineers are offering money to prove the buildings couldn’t have fallen as they did, or other sites proving that the object striking the Pentagon was not an airplane. These aren’t just Arabs or kooky Europeans, but Americans in ever larger numbers.

Writing in ‘The American Thinker’, Rick Moran takes these people to task and suggests that if we’re not careful, those cranky 9/11 myths could take the place of factual 9/11 events in the history books. He mentions the movie “Loose Change” as one recent example. He also mentions the website ‘Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories‘ and a very good article that recently appeared in Popular Mechanics rationally explaining away all those theories. Their debunking efforts haven’t had much of an effect.

Guessing, I’d say that many of these conspiracists couldn’t care less about 9/11 and are more driven by a radical hatred of the social and economic policies of the Bush administration. The ambiguity of 9/11 just provided ready ammunition, made possible by Bush’s less than stellar ability to communicate.

What about the other side of the conspiracy set? These folks aren’t heard from much, and are seemingly mocked by both left and right. In general, they believe Saddam or Iran (or some state) had a role in 9/11, and were using al-Qaeda as a proxy. Ironically the Bush adminstration might actually fall into this camp.

The evidence on their side is also circumstantial, but it makes a heckuva lot more sense than believing clandestine demolition teams rigged the WTC or that a hellfire missile was fired at the Pentagon, presumably by the Pentagon. It’s illustrative that many of the liberals who believe a missile hit the Pentagon might gleefully mock a missile theory to explain the crash of TWA 800 or a sabatage theory to explain the crash of Ron Brown’s plane. But mention Paul Wellstone’s plane crash, and well…it just depends on who occupies the White House.

9/11 was a tragic and puzzling event and left many people begging for answers. Using Occam’s Razor we’re left with believing a wealthy Saudi and his Egyptian doctor friend operated one of the most successful terrorist organizations in history out of tents in the Afghan desert using a disorganized band of followers scattered across the globe. Further, the masterminds of both WTC attacks were related, hailing from a frontier area of Pakistan and neither particularly fundamentalist. These ragtags managed to defeat the highly sophisticated counterintelligence services of the entire western world, and with relative ease. Such are born conspiracies.

Using another worn out phrase, the big picture view is that a core group of Arabs and Islamists have been at war with America since we announced our support for Israel in the middle of the 20th Century. Anyone over 40 vividly remembers the hijackings of the 70s and 80s, or the Marines who were killed in Beirut, or the OPEC induced ‘gas crisis’ during the early 70s, or the Tehranian Embassy takeover. 9/11 only elevated the conflict to a higher plane, and it may take World War III to end it (or the battle of Armegeddon, if you prefer).

But as Mr. Moran points out, if America hopes to win people must clearly understand our modern alamo not just now, but years down the road. Perhaps the high turnout for the move “United 93″ represents one positive step towards that end.

MORE 5/16

In case you missed it elsewhere, the government is going to release the video of American flight 77 hitting the Pentagon. Quite a few lame conspiracy theories suggesting the building was hit with a missile have gained poularity with some on the internet. Video available here. If that site doesn’t respond, try this one.